Joust Quotes

"It did not howl, for it had no need to howl and rage for its power to be felt. It only needed to be what it was: relentless, inescapable, implacable, and ceaseless."

"He wanted so badly to put the bucket down; the rope handle cut into his hands cruelly. It was all that kept him going, knowing that spot was there, marked by the dirt he’d dug up and replaced last night."

"The earth was baked as hard as bricks, as hot beneath a bare foot as the inside of an oven."

"Every scrap, every bone, even the ashes from his fires were used until there was nothing left."

"Teach with the rod, for stripes improve the memory."

"A boy’s ears are on his back, he hears better when beaten."

"My sandal to grind his head into the dust, my foot to break his back."

"He slept on a pile of reeds he had cut, under the same awning that sheltered the wood for the bread oven from rain, in the outer back court, beyond the kitchen court."

"Anger was as constant a companion as hunger."

"When he was angry, he wasn’t on the verge of the tears that often threatened to overwhelm him."

"His heart was pounding so hard with fear that he thought it might burst through his chest."

"The only way to learn how to feed him is to do so."

"So that’s what he meant by 'getting airs...'"

"It was only meat. No animals were being killed here. It was only meat."

"Never, ever, had one of his masters offered to do anything about the marks of a beating!"

"He was only a little boy, after all, and not too practiced in disguising his expression except by the simple expedient of staring at his feet."

"There are three creatures here you have to please; Jouster Ari, myself, and Kashet. No one else matters."

"And believe me, there's a lot to do to please us."

"Your duty is your Jouster and Kashet, first to last. Anything, anything, that interferes with you doing that duty is an offense against your Jouster and his dragon."

"So she won’t be much of a handful for a while. And I heard straight from him that he’s got a new Jouster for her, so she won’t get a chance to go sour."

"There’s more hunters out looking for fledglings, and more Jousters being trained."

"After all, we know as much about the dragons as the Jousters, and we spend more time with them."

"Tame a dragon? Are you mad? You think tending the old ones is work—try taming one from the shell!"

"Yes, but—Kashet’s so tame, so easy to work with—wouldn’t it be worth it?"

"Not if the King wants Jousters, and wants them now."

"The gosling hadn’t followed any human as its mother, it had only followed Vetch."

"No matter what he did, no matter what became of him, nothing in the greater world would change."

"It probably took a lot of people to keep this place running: servants for the Jousters and Overseers; leather craftsmen for the saddles and harnesses; woodworkers to supply furniture and do repairs; weapons makers to make the lances and clubs that the Jousters used; laundry women; cooks and bakers; seamstresses; stonemasons and brickmakers... this place was a little world unto itself."

"He filled the hollow with anger, but it was a slim bulwark against the loneliness."

"Anger. What makes them the lords of the world, anyway? Just the luck of being born Tian, that’s all! If the war was going differently—any of them could be serfs, now, this moment. They don’t deserve their good luck."

"It had been so long since he’d had a friend... bleakness made his eyes sting and he closed them, lest he betray himself with a tear."

"I raised him," Ari said aloud, making Vetch jump. "That’s why he’s different; that’s why we are different."

"Perhaps at first," Ari replied. "But he’s an adult now, and I doubt that he does anymore. I suppose you could say that we’re friends; I understand him, and he understands me."

"The wrongs are so tangled up now that there is no disentangling them."

"It doesn’t seem to concern anyone that we have become what we most despised."

"He choked on his tears now, as he had then, when he had curled into a ball on the malodorous pile of river reeds, and wept himself into exhaustion."

"And none of that matters to you, I suppose," he sighed. "It certainly doesn’t matter to the other Jousters. It doesn’t seem to matter to anyone but me that Tians are doing to Altans precisely what we claimed were the most heinous of crimes when the Heyksin inflicted them upon us."

"Wild with curiosity by this time, he hid in the storage room with the door curtain held down with a weighted bar across the bottom so that it couldn’t get caught by an ill-timed breeze to reveal where he was."

"Sweat prickled his scalp, and a drop slid down his back as he waited."

"They were colorful figures; all four of the priests went shaven-headed, without a wig, but where their heads were bare, their bodies were anything but."

"The spell was an intricate one, not some simple cursing."

"Inside the stifling storage room, Vetch was feeling a bit wilted himself."

"The metalworker has fingers like crocodile hide, and stinks worse than fish eggs. The fisherman wears little but net, and eats only what he cannot sell. The farmer labors from dawn to dusk, serving only the tax collector, the embalmer is shunned by all, the brick maker is as filthy as a pig, the soldier lives every day never knowing if it will be his last. But the scribe never goes hungry; he can aspire to the halls of the great ones, and his is the only profession wherein he himself is the overseer."

"Neither Jouster nor dragon are made in a season."

"I wanted to do something different, something that would be read for the next hundred years."

"He usually courts and lay just at the start of the dry, and the egg hatches when the rains begin."

"Dragons in general, and Kashet in particular, are your business, young dragon boy. Get some sleep, now."

"You have no friends among them, and that disturbs me."

"Serfs are not supposed to be treated like chattel. They are involuntary war captives, by no fault of their own."

"No one seems to have worked out that your people have nothing left to lose."

"And if he wept as he tried to chant, and found the mist mingling with tears that choked his voice, well, there was no one to see him or mock him for his womanish behavior."

"The gods truly look after the fools of the world."

"Evil spirits plague Reaten with boils! I’ll have to take his patrols now, doubtless, while he lies abed, being made much of by all his noble friends!"

"It’s an interesting thing with noble friends; when your star is rising they are all for standing near you and bathing in your reflected glory. But when your star falls, no one can escape from your vicinity fast enough."

"Get Kashet an extra treat; you know, bullock hearts, if there are any. He more than deserves them."

"Good old Haraket! Well, I’ll take him up on all of it; I’m for a cool swim first, in the Atet pool."

"That is because she mistook you for a goat, with all of your silly bleating."

"You are dismissed, dragon boy, little boy, little coward! Run back to your father, pathetic scum!"

"There are no bad dragons here. Only mishandled ones."

"Let me feed her, feed her now, Overseer. She’s hungry now, and she’ll be easier to win when she’s hungry."

"You’ve done well, Vetch. It may be presumptuous of me to say this, but I’m quite proud of you."

"There were so many ways in which the plan could fail, so few that would lead to success."

"Every morning Haraket asked if there were eggs yet. Every morning, Vetch answered in the negative, truthfully."

"Take the first, or wait? He wavered between the two actions all day, the egg looming large in his mind the entire time."

"First-born is supposed to be strongest and the smartest."

"One thing at a time. One day at a time. There was no point in thinking past the next obstacle."

"He sighed, as the bats went on with their hunting, paying no attention at all to him."

"The spirits of the dead were supposed to take the form of bats."

"Vetch reburied the egg in the corner of the empty pen least visible from the entrance."

"There were a very great many 'ifs' between him and a dragonet, and most of them he had no control over."

"If Ari was right, eggs hatched well inside Growing season, giving the richest time of the year, so far as game was concerned, for the critical first weeks of a dragonet's life."

"And it occurred to him the same night, that the one time when his anger stopped gnawing at him altogether was when Ari was around."

"And through his foolishness and Horeb’s—the latter not having the good sense to notice when his he-dragon had begun a courtship flight!—Tia had nearly lost two Jousters and two dragons."

"Maybe that wasn’t true, but it was something he didn’t want to have to put to the test."

"The egg was starting to move because the developing dragon inside was shifting restlessly."

"A man can’t turn to fart without blowing stink into a meddling priest’s face today."

"I authorize you to take as many boys, be they free, slave or serf, as you need for the new Jouster Hundred."

"Someone like Fisk—He loved his goats—he knew how to see what they were going to do by the way they acted."

"And serfs and slaves are always doing the dirty work around animals."

"By the gods, I see what you mean. They’re out there, invisible, because none of us ever look at them!"

"At least this was more confusion to hide what he was doing."

"The falcons haven’t the mind of these fellows, They just go straight into a trance when the hood’s on their heads."

"Everything conspired to help him, it seemed."

"The gods of Tia are stronger than the gods of Alta; her priests are wiser and more powerful, and in no way can the Altan magicians hope to prevail over those of this land."

"No man goes hunting with only duck arrows in his quiver, when he does not know what other quarry he might encounter."

"The sea witches have a new magic, but as it is Wind and Water magic, it is subject to the season and the conditions of the season."

"Perhaps the Dry holds terror for the enemy of the North, but we know it as an old neighbor."

"This is not to say that the sea witches may not find ways of raising storms in the Dry."

"Haras of the all-seeing eye is the guardian of the winds of Tia, and of the Jousters, too, and you can rest assured that His hand is over the Jousters and their dragons."

"Trust in the gods and their priests, and dream of the Gold of Honor!"

"He would rather die than give her up. She was everything to him now; without her, it wouldn’t matter what they did to him."

"You don’t really think I’m going to take you back, do you?"

"I may be a monster, but at least I’m not that sort of monster."

"There. How can I possibly take you back? She’d only come and carry you off again, and probably tear the rest of us to shreds doing it!"

"I am not taking you back. I never intended to."

"You’re both still youngsters. Now, if she was Kashet’s size, they’d make more of an effort to take her, but as it stands, they’ll know very well she won’t be useful to them as a fighting dragon for another couple of years, and by then—well, so will you."

"I would rather die than lose her," he said, quietly. "She’s all that I have."

"Your gods go with you, in whatever you decide, Kiron."